walk down the aisle, scattering rose petals over the carpet. Claire was also a redhead and, at eleven, too old really for the role she was fulfilling with such exaggerated care…dropping two petals on this side, three petals on that side. Molly had wanted a flower girl and there was no one else. The ring bearer—Molly had wanted one of those, too—had been easier to find. They’d borrowed Calvin Braddock, the five-year-old son of Bryce and Lara Braddock, who, if not close friends of either Scott or Molly, were at least considered friends of the Danville family. Ainsley could see Cal’s white-blond cowlick darting back and forth behind the purple smock of the wedding coordinator, who seemed to be trying to keep the boy from dashing down the aisle.
The music was too loud at the front of the church to hear what was happening at the back. Ainsley was surprised to see a sudden collective stir of activity. The congregation—at least, the dozen or so Danville relatives seated in the first few rows—grew restless and began turning around in the pews to see what was going on. Even Scott, who’d spent the entire processional so far staring anxiously at his shoes, looked up.
“I got to tell the groom somethin’!” Calvin’s little-boy voice broke through the lull between the final chords of Pachelbel and the opening chimes of Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus.” “She told me to tell him!”
Cal pulled free of the wedding coordinator’s grasping hands and ran, tuxedo tails flying, down the aisle, dashing past Claire in a move that knocked her off her feet and scattered her rose petals in one thick, damp clump. “She ’loped!” Calvin shouted as he caught sight of Scott at the altar. “The bride ’loped!”
Scott went pale with alarm, but it was Matt who moved forward to calm the ring bearer and ask for a more coherent explanation.
“Catch your breath, Calvin,” Matt said soothingly. “And start from the beginning.”
Cal obediently sucked in a huge gasp of air, his bright gaze darting toward Scott. “Miss Molly,” he said in a rush. “She told me to tell you she’s sorry, but she ’loped.”
“Eloped?” Matt questioned, articulating the word carefully. “Are you saying that Molly eloped?”
Confirming the interpretation with a vigorous nod, Calvin repeated the message excitedly. “She ’loped with Mad Mack in the Mackmobile.”
SITTING ON A LOW RISER under the bridal bower, Ainsley plucked at the pouf of organza bunched around her like a lavender nest and felt guiltier by the second. Calvin’s startling announcement still reverberated in the church sanctuary, picked up by one person after another after another, repeated in a confusing hum of overlapping voices.
She eloped? With a cartoon character?
Mad Mack? Are you sure that’s what he said?
She must’ve had an emergency. Why else would she run off like that?
He said Mad Mack, I’m telling you.
How can the bride have eloped if the groom’s still standing up there?
Mad Mack? The bride eloped with someone called Mad Mack?
That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.
The bridal party of sisters and cousins had stood restlessly for a few awkward moments, not knowing where to look or what to do. Then, one by one, they settled on the altar steps or found a seat in the front pews. And there they sat, awaiting instruction or dismissal, without a clue as to what action—if any—might be appropriate. Matt, being the oldest of the cousins and the best man, had immediately gone to the back of the church, where he could be seen firing brusque questions at Phyllis while he paced from the vestibule doorway to the empty bride’s room and then outside to the front church steps, where he stared at the street. Inside the sanctuary, the clatter of conversation rose and fell in hushed waves. Whispered questions quickly took on an indignant tone and grew louder, becoming quietly outraged that anyone—especially a woman without connections, or much in the way of beauty, brains or personality to recommend her—would offer such an insult to Scott Danville. The entire Danville family, for that matter. Every wedding guest present was, after all, either a member of the Danville clan or a close friend of the family since Molly came, basically, unencumbered with kith or kin.
The clamor stuttered suddenly into a moment’s awkward pause just in time for everyone to hear Uncle Edward’s vehement instruction to his son. “Forget it. You are not going after her, Scott. She just jilted you, for heaven’s sake. You! A Danville. Clearly, the woman is insane. You can’t possibly want her back even if you knew how to find her, which you don’t, and which I wouldn’t let you do, if you did. She’s gone,” he said angrily. “And I say, good riddance!”
Ainsley glanced down the riser to watch Scott, flushed with humiliation, hurt and anger, give up the struggle like a balloon with a slow leak. She knew the moment the reality hit him full in the heart—Molly was gone!—and he sank like a stone to sit, slumped and stunned, with his head in his hands, devastated, desolate and without a shred of hope to hold on to. In her whole life, Ainsley had never seen more eloquent body language. Even his vividly red hair seemed to have lost its light and become nothing more than a listless covering on his head.
This was her fault. Ainsley knew it all the way to the tips of her lavender-painted toenails. She didn’t want to admit it, didn’t want to see herself as the spoiler, but there it was. Molly’s baffling departure wasn’t quite so much of a mystery to Ainsley as it was to everyone else. Unexpected and surprising? Yes. In a million years, Ainsley wouldn’t have predicted Molly’s last-minute dash from the church. But now that it had happened…?
Well, she could think of a possible explanation, a plausible, probable interpretation, one glaring moment at last night’s rehearsal dinner when the apprentice matchmaker had, once again, forgotten the importance of discretion and opened her mouth before engaging her brain.
Obviously, she was still several lessons short of being the prudent, discerning matchmaker she wanted, and was determined, to become.
“I realize this joyous occasion has taken a somber turn, Ains, but you look unaccountably gloomy. What gives?” Handsome as a god, with a smile that quite simply made the world a brighter place, Andrew dropped down to sit beside her, bustling the yards of organza out of his way and fixing her with a persistent, you-may-as-well-tell-me look.
But Ainsley couldn’t confess. Not yet. Not even to her trusted twin. “In case you haven’t noticed, our cousin is devastated.”
“Can’t argue with you there. But since you were completely convinced Scott was marrying the wrong woman anyway, I thought you might see this as some form of divine intervention. Even if it is a little difficult to envision Mad Mack in the deus ex machina role.”
“I never even heard of Mad Mack,” she said with a sigh. “Much less a Mackmobile.”
“You should spend more time watching cartoons,” Andrew suggested. “Mad Mack is a part-man, part-machine superhero and the Mackmobile is the coolest car on television. Well, at least it’s the coolest animated car on the Cartoon Stars channel.”
“You obviously have too much time on your hands.”
“Me and Calvin,” he agreed. “He’s five and I’m still five at heart.”
Ainsley offered a frown, although she adored her twin for trying to cheer her up with his silliness. “I feel awful about this, Drew. Even though I never thought Molly and Scott were a match made in heaven, I never wanted
